Municipal board forces project approval

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This article was published 21/06/2023 (858 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Opponents fear a controversial silica sand and mining project is a done deal after a provincial government body overruled local municipal decision-makers.

Tensions have boiled over in the Rural Municipality of Springfield, culminating in Mayor Patrick Therrien phoning the RCMP on residents during a council meeting last week and locking residents out of council chambers days later during a vote on a contentious zoning amendment and development agreement for Calgary-based Sio Silica’s proposed sand processing facility.

But behind closed doors, according to an audio recording from the meeting, Therrien said those votes weren’t in his council’s — or the public’s — control.

“Our hands are literally tied when it comes to this process,” Therrien said. “It’s a court-ordered municipal board, there’s no room for appeal.”

In March, Manitoba’s Municipal Board — a provincially appointed, quasi-judicial tribunal mandated to settle planning disputes — ordered Springfield’s council to change its zoning bylaws to accommodate Sio Silica’s processing plant.

The board further ruled the municipality enter a development agreement with the company to set rules around the facility’s operations.

With that order, the board effectively overturned a unanimous council decision made several months prior.

“The government of Manitoba uses (the municipal board) as a tool to override locally elected representatives and this is appalling,” Springfield Coun. Mark Miller said during the June 13 council meeting that ended when the mayor called the RCMP.

“I am opposed to the municipal board’s intervention and interference into the affairs of the RM of Springfield.”

The controversial vote that sealed the zoning amendments into law was an overdue formality, said Therrien, while a second motion, ultimately dismissed when one councillor’s abstention led to a tie, would have seen Springfield and Sio Silica enter a development agreement.

With that motion stalled, Sio Silica is gearing up to take its fight back to the municipal board in hopes it will again rule in its favour.

Tangi Bell, president of Our Line in the Sand Manitoba, a citizen group opposing Sio Silica’s mining proposal, said the municipal board’s ruling demonstrates “this government is paving the way for industry at all costs.”

The province has yet to decide whether to grant Sio Silica an environmental licence for its sand-extraction process. Clean Environment Commission hearings on the company’s controversial extraction method concluded in March, and the commission is due to provide licensing recommendations to Environment Minister Kevin Klein on Thursday.

The municipal board got involved in the matter when Sio Silica needed council’s permission to conduct natural resource development on the land it had purchased. It first submitted a conditional use application — which would allow it to build and run the processing facility under prescribed municipal rules — but later abandoned it and instead proposed Springfield rewrite zoning bylaws with a new category for resource extraction.

When the proposed zoning amendments were struck down at a council meeting in June 2022, Sio Silica took it up with the province.

During municipal board hearings in October, Sio Silica argued it had been told a conditional-use application would not be approved by Springfield council and that “given the imperative to protect natural resources for development” a more substantive zoning amendment was necessary to minimize economic risk.

Springfield argued the proposed amendments were too complex and far-reaching to consider, and that a conditional-use application would suffice.

Ultimately, the board gave Springfield 90 days to both enact a zoning amendment that would apply to the Sio Silica property and enter into a development agreement with the company, or else Sio Silica could appeal to the board.

“It’s the provincial government that is the responsible agent here, not me, and not the council here,” Therrien said as he faced questions on June 16 from councillors about his decision to proceed with the contentious motions in the absence of public input.

In a statement from an unnamed spokesperson, the Manitoba government said, “Municipal Board appeals are an important part of the democratic process to ensure local decisions are made in a responsible manner and respective of the needs of the community as a whole.”

The provincial board’s decision to overrule local council “overthrows and suppresses democracy,” Bell said.

“It takes away everything a municipality has for development and zoning — things we all went to hearings for. It basically just spits on it, stomps on it and laughs.”

Even in face of provincial pressure, Bell and Miller said the public should have been given a chance to weigh in on the development agreement.

Instead, council met with Sio Silica and lawyers to hash out the terms of the development agreement in off-the-record meetings. The public was not provided a draft copy of that agreement before this week’s vote.

Miller argues the municipality shouldn’t formalize any agreement with Sio Silica until the environmental licensing process is complete. That includes finalizing an as-yet-unseen remediation plan the company was due to produce over a year ago.

He wants to see the development agreement tackle the environmental implications of not only the facility, but Sio Silica’s project as a whole.

Residents and experts are concerned the mining process will pose significant threats to the community’s freshwater aquifer, but the municipal board considers those concerns to be out of the scope of the zoning and development decisions.

“We can’t just throw out the environmental aspects of this. It’s so concerning, it’s so fundamental to the whole operation,” Miller said.

julia-simone.rutgers@freepress.mb.ca